2008 After Action Report

AAR

AT THE ARDEN PARK HOTEL MARCH 28, 29 & 30, 2008

Molemen attacked Hotlead this year, cleverly disguised as city road workers they began digging up the streets all around the Arden Park Hotel the day before the convention began. That didn’t put anyone off though and over 300 miniature wargaming enthusiasts surged across the hazardous terrain for a weekend of great games and comradeship.

This year I think was our smoothest Hotlead ever, reflected in the fact that I slept not badly and actually got to hang around Saturday evening, have a beer and play in a game, rather than go home with a splitting headache like I usually do. Every time I scanned the hall everyone seemed to be having fun. Crowds surged around the Bring & Buy, the Warhammer 40K Armageddon game went on forever with approximately 50,000 points worth of troops on the table and I’m not sure how many players. It was very hard to get through the hall at times. Some games didn’t run due to no one signing up, but I’d rather have that than more players than games available. We had 51 games and 6 tournaments covering every period from ancients to science fiction, and every scale from 1/2400 scale dreadnoughts to 54mm fantasy adventurers. Lots of air games this year too, enthusiasts of dog fight games could try out three different rules sets and play in every session if they’d wanted. Horse and musket made a bit of comeback with Saturday morning seeing three 12 foot tables crammed with 15mm figures all refighting the Napoleonic Wars with three different rulesets. World War 2 remains the biggest period though in number of games, with 14 of the games being in this period.

Don brought his friends from Wisconsin with a Mediterranean island and it got invaded twice complete with C-47s dropping paratroopers, landing craft and commandos in a captured trawler. Although other 20th century games were just as impressive; Kirk Doherty’s San Leonardo game featuring German panzer grenadiers counterattacking the RCR during the Ortona campaign looked gorgeous and a participant said it was quite tense, Ian Tetlow’s retreat from Mons battle in 1914 was brilliant and Stephen Thompson’s 28mm Iraq War battle was hard fought and visually stunning.

The Hotlead crew was quite busy GMing; our resident Zombie-meister Peter “I Want Your Brains” Garnham returned with his post-apocalyptic city and survivors battling hordes of undead, Pasha Hutter had a very snowy Yugoslavian partisan game, his ever popular Mongols with Mausers 1920s Pulp adventure and he did most of the Game Mastering for the giant Sunday morning Colonial Bring and Battle. Barry and Hotlead alumnus Keith ran a SF armour battle Saturday night and after lunch on Sunday we all got ambushed by Rick in one of his Viet Nam games. In the ancient period we had some very ambitious games; Dan Thompson ran the same scenario once with Fields of Glory and again with DBMM to compare and contrast the two hot new ancient rules. Stephen Lindsey refought the Battle of Granikos with a huge 15mm Persian army. I think Alexander still won.

We also had 5 DBA tournaments which all seemed to be well attended and featured some unique ideas to overcome the power armies endemic in tournaments. Here are their results:

The Viking Age DBA Tournament

Place

Player

Army

Score

1

Mike Saunders

II/81d Sub-Roman British 600AD

67

2

Colin Rice

IV/3 Anglo-Norman 1119AD

46

3

Will Michael

II/68b Pictish 500AD

28

4

Steve Lindsey

IV/28 Prussian 1282AD

27

5

Rob Hanks

IV/13a Medieval German 1201AD

25

6

Paul Stoklosa

III/40d Leidang 1070AD

4

The Kings of Britain 635AD DBA Tournament

Place

Player

Kingdom

Army

Topography

Ending

No. of Vassals

Score

1

Dave May

Dalriada

II/54b Scots-Irish

Littoral

1

72

2

Colin Rice

Strathclyde

II/81d Sub-Roman British

Arable

2

59

3

Geoff Rothwell

Mercia

III/24a Middle Anglo-Saxon

Arable

0

51

4

Ken Ryan

Pictland

II/68b Pictish

Arable

0

30

5

Rob Hanks

Gododdin

II/81d Sub-Roman British

Arable

0

28

6

Mike Saunders

Rheged

II/81d Sub-Roman British

Arable

0

26

7

Mark Gagnon

North Cymru

III/19a Welsh

Hilly

0

0

8

Paul Stoklosa

Northumbria

III/24a Middle Anglo-Saxon

Arable

0

0

Open DBA Tournament

Place

Player

Army

Score

1

Dave Ross

II/5d Later Hoplite Greek – Thessalian

66

2

Will Michael

II/68b Pictish

50

3

Rob Hanks

IV/13a Medieval German

50

4

Mike Lindfield

II/7 Later Achaemenid Persian

28

5

Dave May

II/1 Republican Indian

26

6

Colin Rice

II/19a Seleucid

25

7

Mike Saunders

II/56 Early Imperial Romans

24

8

Paul Stoklosa

I/48 Thracian

23

Stratford Scramble DBA Tournament

Place

Player

Round 1 Army

Round 2 Army

Round 3 Army

Score

1

Dave May

I/52 Early Hoplite Greek – Asiatic Greeks

III/71 Anglo-Danish

IV/43 Early Swiss

65

2

Will Michael

II/26 Sarmatians

I/52 Early Hoplite Greek – Asiatic Greeks

III/71 Anglo-Danish

54

3

Mike Saunders

II/5d Later Hoplite Greek – Thessalian

II/19a Seleucid

II/26 Sarmatians

51

4

Colin Rice

III/46 Norse Irish

I/55b Early Romans

II/19a Seleucid

48

5

Paul Stoklosa

III/40b Norse Vikings

II/5d Later Hoplite Greek – Thessalian

III/46 Norse Irish

28

6

Stephan Lindsay

II/19a Seleucid

IV/13a Medieval Germans

I/52 Early Hoplite Greek – Asiatic Greeks

28

7

Rob Hanks

IV/43 Early Swiss

III/46 Norse Irish

IV/13a Medieval Germans

27

8

Dave Ross

I/55b Early Romans

III/40b Norse Vikings

II/5d Later Hoplite Greek – Thessalian

25

9

Mike Landfield

III/71 Anglo-Danish

II/26 Sarmatians

III/40b Norse Vikings

24

10

Calvin Sims

IV/13a Medieval Germans

IV/43 Early Swiss

I/55b Early Romans

1

On the 1 st round the available armies are assigned randomly. On the 2 nd round the top scoring player was assigned the lowest scoring army, the second highest player was assigned the second lowest scoring army, etc. On the final round each player played with their own army.

Medieval Europe, Middle East, and Western Steppes DBA Tournament

Place

Player

Army

Score

1

Will Michael

III45b Pre-Feudal Scots 1124AD

46

2

Mike Saunders

III/52 East Franks 800AD

27

3

Dave Ross

III/52 East Franks 801AD

23

4

Rob Hanks

III/40d Leidang 1070AD

3

I’m sure there are more games worthy of mention that I’ve forgotten. The Bring & Buy was busy and successful again. I keep adding more tables and it just keeps growing. The crowds were quite thick around the tables all morning and I was worried my Bring & Buy team were going to be over run. But Rico, Paul, Joe and Anna deftly converted a miniatures feeding frenzy into hard cash. Once I announced this year’s charity we got several donations added to the pot. As a result Hotlead is donating $500 to the Canadian Forces Personnel Assistance Fund to help service personnel and their families and another $500 to the Hospital Comforts Fund to help Canadian service personnel while in hospital. If you would like to donate to these worthy causes yourself you can find out more at the CFPSA (now called CFMWS) website: https://www.cfmws.com/en/Pages/default.aspx

So that’s about it. All the lose ends are tied up now. We have already booked the Arden Park Hotel again for next year. The dates for Hotlead 2009 are March 27, 28 and 29th, 2009. The gang and I are already starting to make plans for next year’s games!

Thanks again to everyone for coming and being so supportive and I’ll see you all next year.